From: Cynthia Hodgson <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Mon, 3 Jun 2013 10:42:41 -0400

The National Information Standards Organization (NISO) announces the
publication of a new recommended practice, Improving OpenURLs Through
Analytics (IOTA): Recommendations for Link Resolver Providers (NISO
RP-21-2013). These recommendations are the result of a three-year
study performed by the NISO IOTA Working Group in which millions of
OpenURLs were analyzed and a Completeness Index was developed as a
means of quantifying OpenURL quality. By applying this Completeness
Index to their OpenURL data and following the recommendations,
providers of link resolvers can monitor the quality of their OpenURLs
and work with content providers to improve the provided
metadata—ultimately resulting in a higher success rate for end users.
The project is summarized in a technical report, IOTA Working Group
Summary of Activities and Outcomes (NISO TR-05-2013), which was
published along with the recommended practice.

“OpenURLs are context-sensitive URLs widely used by publishers and
libraries to allow end users to connect to the full-text of
e-resources discovered during a search,” explains Aron Wolf, Data
Program Analyst with Serials Solutions and member of the IOTA Working
Group. “To ensure that the user accesses the most appropriate copy of
a resource (one that is preferably free to the user due to a
subscription through the user’s library), the OpenURL link connects to
a link resolver knowledgebase. The metadata embedded within the
OpenURL is compared through the link resolver with what is held in or
licensed through the library and the end user is then presented with
the available full-text access options. At a typical academic library,
thousands of OpenURL requests are initiated by patrons each week. The
problem is that too often these links do not work as expected because
the metadata in the OpenURL is incorrect or incomplete, leaving users
unable to access the resources they need.”

“Through our analysis, the IOTA Working Group found that there was a
pattern to the failures in OpenURLs,” states Adam Chandler, Electronic
Resources User Experience Librarian at Cornell University Library and
Chair of the IOTA Working Group. “The Completeness Index was developed
as a method of predicting the success of OpenURLs from a given
provider by examining the data elements that provider includes in the
OpenURLs from its site. This metric can serve as a tool to help
determine which content providers are more likely to cause linking
problems due to missing data elements in their OpenURLs and can
identify exactly what the problems are. The Recommended Practice
explains how to implement the measures so that problems can be clearly
identified and steps taken with the content providers to improve the
quality of the metadata.”

“The IOTA Recommended Practice is a perfect complement to the
NISO/UKSG KBART Recommended Practice (NISO RP-9-2010),” states Todd
Carpenter, NISO’s Executive Director. “While KBART recommends how to
improve the data within the link resolver knowledgebase, IOTA is
focused on the metadata passed in the OpenURL itself. Together, these
recommendations can ensure that OpenURLs will consistently provide the
results that libraries, publishers, and end users have come to expect
from this technology.”

The IOTA Recommended Practice and Technical Report are both available
for free download from the IOTA Working Group’s page on the NISO
website at: www.niso.org/workrooms/openurlquality.

For more information, contact:

Nettie Lagace
NISO Associate Director for Programs
National Information Standards Organization
301-254-6512
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